Kasabian – ‘For Crying Out Loud’ Review

Guitarist and primary songwriter Serge Pizzorno has described Kasabian’s album as more “simple” than their previous work. It’s hard to imagine a pleasure more simple than ‘Club Foot’, a 2004 student union anthem that centred around the word “Ooosh!” being chanted over and over, or a set of songs less lyrically complex than 2014 single ‘Eez-eh’ (“Everyone’s on bugle /Now we’re being watched by Google”).

Yet ‘For Crying Out Loud’ is chockablock with massive tunes that make an instant impact. Pizzorno wrote the whole thing in just six weeks, in a bid to imbue the album with a sense of urgency. And it’s taken him to the songwriters’ Holy Grail: insistent new melodies that already sound weirdly familiar. See romantic banger ‘Wasted’ (“Summer is here once again… But you won’t catch me in my shorts”) and the glorious disco stomp of ‘Are You Looking For Action?’. These songs are the sound of joy, canned and compressed for your aural pleasure.

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First track ‘Ill Ray (The King)’ encapsulates the massive knees-up the Leicester lads have billed the entire record as. A pulverising juggernaut, it stutters and jolts through a booming chorus, roared backing vocals engineered for a festival near you (you can almost hear “What’s your band called, mate?” being chanted back at the stage). Best of all is the fabulously corny ‘Bless This Acid House’, with its lovably naff call-and-response pre-chorus. The greatest song Status Quo never wrote, it’s dumb, fun and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

The relentlessly jaunty ‘Good Fight’ boasts a little boogie-woogie piano, a reminder that Kasabian were never too concerned with being cool. ‘Put Your Life On It’ is a sprawling campfire singalong, while ‘You’re In Love With A Psycho’ is an ode to the arbitrary nature of attraction – you can’t choose who you love; it just happens. And it would take a hard heart indeed to spurn ‘For Crying Out Loud’.